


us that made this mess

by ashkatom



Category: Hatoful Kareshi | Hatoful Boyfriend
Genre: Alternate Universe - Human, Gore, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-25
Updated: 2016-04-25
Packaged: 2018-06-04 09:57:08
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,709
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6653260
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ashkatom/pseuds/ashkatom
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Most of your work is charm. It’s a kind way of saying that you have always had a talent for finding the faultlines in a person and targeting them until nothing is left but rubble to sift through. Sex is always the easiest path for this sort of thing, since sharing secrets of one sort so often leads to another. You’d even tried the usual tactics on Iwamine when you’d first insinuated your way into the infirmary, although it quickly became obvious that he was uninterested. Oblivious, even. A closed book to you, regardless - you can charm without sex, but Iwamine seemed to care for none of what you had to offer.</p>
<p>If you’d known all it would have taken to clear this up was a little blood, well. There’s enough on your hands to go around.</p>
            </blockquote>





	us that made this mess

**Author's Note:**

> HOO BOY HI SO. I'm not good at warning about things with AO3 tags, because I always imagine the tag wranglers going through things and getting annoyed at my rambling, so here are some **very detailed warnings** which **you will need**. First off: gore. This fic is seduction-by-body-disposal. That should tell you everything you need to know about that. Second: murder. There's a corpse, so. Yuuya's family history is also mentioned. Third: dubcon. Yuuya's a spy and even he doesn't know if he's doing this because he wants to. Fourth: underage warnings. I fudged the ages a bit for worldbuilding purposes - he's about twenty, at the time of this fic, although that's never mentioned. But it's implied he's been having sex with targets for a while, because I don't trust any organisation that would hire a 17-year-old spy in canon.
> 
> That's... that's all, I think. Happy birthday, Yuuya! I swear to god, the next thing I put out will be light and sweet and hardly fucked up at all.

“Ah, Sakazaki,” Iwamine greets you as you slide into the infirmary. Then the smell of blood hits you and you choke, your attempt at avoiding a reprimand from Iwamine forgotten. “You’re late.”

You yank back the only closed privacy curtain and stop, staring down at the bed Iwamine is leaning over. Sightless eyes, matted blonde-brown hair, _blood_. Hiyoko. “What have you done?” you breathe, letting the curtain fall from your fingers. Your hand twitches towards the taser hidden underneath your uniform blazer. _Hiyoko_. You like - you _had liked_ Hiyoko. Cheerful, oblivious, clever, excellent at teasing your brother into tripping over his own words. She was an exceptional chesspiece for the Dove and Hawk parties, and now Iwamine seems to have sacrificed her to advance the Hawk Party’s agenda.

Blood drips off the bed’s corner, from small pools forming in the wrinkles of the waterproof cover into a container Iwamine must have placed there for the purpose of collecting it. Your free hand covers your mouth of its own accord.

“I didn’t kill her, Sakazaki.” The doctor punctuates his words with a clatter of tools onto a tray. “Resolve your moral crisis quickly. We only have until the morning, and you’ve wasted enough time.”

Leone would have a number of words to say to you, none of them complimentary, if he knew that you were standing poleaxed in a room with Shuu Iwamine and a diplomatically significant corpse instead of taking any action. You shake off your surprise - _adieu_ , _Tosaka_ \- and finally shift into a defensive stance, taser pointed squarely at Iwamine. “What moral crisis, _mon ami_?” you ask, level. “We’ve established I have none.”

Iwamine looks at you before shaking his head and turning away.

“My trigger finger is itchy, Doctor,” you warn him.

“Hiyoko Tosaka’s death will be discovered by morning,” he says, flat, all but ignoring the threat you present to his continued well-being. There’s plastic sheeting on the floor, but he takes some more of the plastic from a drawer and begins hanging it over the curtain rails, stretching to tape it in place with alarmingly well-practiced ease. “At which point a number of measures set in place by the Hawk Party will be carried out. Your brother-” a slight, pleased curl of his lips graces his face at those two words, “-is in the line of fire.”

Your heart turns to ice in your chest.

“Dismembering a body takes more strength than my right arm is capable of.” Iwamine tears a long section of tape off his roll and crouches to tape the wall plastic to the floor plastic, sealing the room. “These circumstances are hardly ideal, but we are working with a time limit.”

“Dismemberment,” you echo. “Who _killed_ her? Forgive me, but you do top the list of suspects, Doctor.”

Iwamine smiles a gruesome smile and throws a box of gloves at you. You barely catch it, your grip on the taser what it is, and then reluctantly put the taser back in its holster. Dove Party allegiance or no, Iwamine knows you well enough by now to know that Sakuya’s well-being will always take precedence in your motivations. You’ll crawl back to Leone afterwards, of course, and try to mitigate whatever damage you have caused, but here and now you have little choice but to co-operate.

“Kawara,” Iwamine says by way of answering you, and you nearly drop the box.

—

There is a small shred of pearl-clutching decency left in you that nearly objects to undressing Hiyoko. Iwamine slices her clothes off in long, professional cuts before you can voice your objections, sliding the rags out from under her and tossing them into the corner designated for things that will need to be incinerated when you’re finished. It eases you that he’s not lascivious about her nudity in the least, although you have your suspicions that nudity is a thing that the good doctor will never regard with interest. Still, his detachment from the situation makes it easier to compartmentalise. Death hardly fazes you at this point, but you can’t say you’ve had to tear a body limb from limb before.

Peeling her open hardly bears talking about, although Iwamine handles it with a reverence you didn’t expect. The smell, of course, is indescribable, though it gets a little more bearable as the doctor removes and bags her organs. Your role in the proceedings seems to be relegated to handing over test tubes as he demands them, taking slivers of her guts and lungs and heart in turn, making thoughtful noises that you don’t want to know the meaning of.

“A waste,” he says to himself, as he ties the bag holding her liver shut.

“What is?” you ask, before you realise that having him forget your presence is probably the wiser tactic in this situation.

His eyes flick up to you, startled. He looks down again without answering, which you expected, and then abruptly sets his tools aside and takes off his gloves. “Your lack of sympathy towards your peers is startling, Sakazaki.”

“Merely curious about what _you_ might term a waste, _Docteur._ ” From the way he’s searching your makeshift hermetically-sealed room, you deduce he wants a new pair of gloves, and throw him the box. “You are renowned for having no sympathy, after all.”

The snap of Iwamine’s gloves is sharp in this tiny, strange world you’ve locked yourself into. “This is the culmination of the Hawk Party’s plans,” he says, and then _tsks_ when you start. “It shouldn’t come as a surprise, Sakazaki. It disappoints me to learn that your handler is as useless as you are.” Ignoring the response that gets from you, he reaches out to Hiyoko’s shoulder, tracing the vector of its curve to her collarbone. “I have my own reasons for the actions I took.” His eyes are far away, almost dreamy, and certainly no longer looking at Hiyoko. “And yet. I regret its inefficiencies. The Hawk Party was necessary and, at the same time, limiting.”

“Was?” you ask.

Iwamine picks up a wide knife that tapers to a pointed tip, weighing it in his hand before flipping it with idle competence and offering it to you handle-first. Your fingers close around it, and at that moment, you realise that this is happening. Your life hasn’t left much room for moral scruples - you’ve killed, before, and hastily disposed of bodies, but this is _Hiyoko_. An innocent \- at least, you assume, and you would be very surprised to learn otherwise. There is still part of you that thinks you should have been able to prevent this. 

“Begin with the arms,” he orders you, paying your hesitance no heed. It helps.

You look at the knife, which suddenly seems rather inadequate. Whenever you’ve disposed of a body before, it has always been a ‘sink it in the ocean’ situation rather than a ‘dismember and disperse’ one, but you’re familiar enough with the human body’s strength to doubt your ability to make it through flesh and bone without something a little stronger. “A saw seems like it would be more suitable,” you hint.

Iwamine makes a disapproving noise, uncomfortably reminiscent of the few times you’ve mis-shelved things in the infirmary. “Here,” he says, and presses his fingers into Tosaka’s shoulder where it curves into the armpit, leaving pale marks. “Expose the joint, then push until the joint separates.”

Butchering is butchering, you suppose. You compartmentalise, shove the knowledge that you are cutting apart Hiyoko away, and make the first cut into her flesh. It parts more easily than you had expected, although it may just be that Iwamine keeps his knives sharp. He offers no rebukes as you cut deep into her armpit, sinking the knife in until it hits bone, and even turns her arm so that you can continue the cut around the joint. You wedge the knife into the cut and pull the flesh aside to make sure that you’re somewhat in the correct area, then have to wedge the fingers of your free hand into the gap you’ve created as well to get a glimpse of bone. Blood oozes, sluggish, onto your hand as you lean your weight into the knife, shoving the tip into the cartilage of the joint. At this point, the process becomes alarmingly like separating a chicken. You push on the arm and work your knife to separate anything that wishes to remain together until the only thing halting the removal of the limb is its own natural movement.

Leaning back to consider the problem, you absently swipe your hand over your forehead, sweeping some hair out of your eyes and realising too late that you’ve left a gruesome mark across your face in the process. You look up to see Iwamine staring at you, eyes wide and face paler than usual, likely disgusted by your lack of caution. Helpless, you hold up your gore-covered hands, leaving the knife embedded in Hiyoko’s shoulder. “I know it’s an alarming reversal of our usual roles, _Docteur_ , but I don’t suppose you could assist me with a swab?”

Iwamine swallows and looks down at the corpse on the table. “No.” Before you can protest, he examines your handiwork. “This is sufficient. Pull the arm to apply pressure against the acromioclavicular joint, then sever any remaining tissue.”

“The acromioclavicular joint,” you mutter, and start pushing the arm you’ve nearly severed up. The bones start grinding against each other at the top of the shoulder’s range of motion, and you take a moment to shove the knife deeper into the joint it’s wedged in, grunting at the effort necessary as the joint starts to stretch beyond its confines. 

Beneath the sounds of raw flesh, creaking bone, and your own efforts, you hear a sharp inhale from Iwamine.

With one last push from you, the arm tears out of its socket and dangles obscenely. The knife falls away, and Iwamine lashes out to catch it, his fingers closing around the handle in a white-knuckle grip. He lets out a breath and stabs the knife, almost idly, into the bed beside your hands, which are steadying the arm you’ve now mostly removed from Hiyoko’s body. The blade grazes your arm, a stinging line.

“I have told you to take more care with infirmary equipment, Sakazaki,” he says. His tone is his usual disapproval-tinged deadpan, but his eyes are locked on your arm, and his breathing is more shallow than the situation calls for. More slowly than you should have, you put two and two together and realise that the doctor is, indeed, not attracted to nudity. 

Most of your work is charm. It’s a kind way of saying that you have always had a talent for finding the faultlines in a person and targeting them until nothing is left but rubble to sift through. Sex is always the easiest path for this sort of thing, since sharing secrets of one sort so often leads to another. You’d even tried the usual tactics on Iwamine when you’d first insinuated your way into the infirmary, although it quickly became obvious that he was uninterested. Oblivious, even. A closed book to you, regardless - you can charm without sex, but Iwamine seemed to care for none of what you had to offer.

If you’d known all it would have taken to clear this up was a little blood, well. There’s enough on your hands to go around.

Without prompting, you pick up the knife and cut through the last piece of skin keeping the arm attached to the shoulder. It comes away from Hiyoko’s body and you lay it alongside her, heavier than you expected. 

“The other one,” Iwamine says, voice hoarse. You salute him with the knife before moving to the other side of the bed and carrying out the same process. It seems that practice makes perfect, as the removal of this arm goes more smoothly, if not easily. Iwamine rests his hands on the first arm you removed as if he is about to examine it, but it goes forgotten while he stares at you the whole time.

It is a terrible thing you are contemplating, and you know it. The situation itself is absurd - butchering the body of your underclassman as a twisted form of flirtation - but you’ve hardly got the moral ground to stand on. The murder - however it was carried out, and you don’t really expect Kawara is responsible - is done, and no action of yours can change the fact that Hiyoko is dead. If you can use your skills to tilt the future in your favour, however…

Carelessly, you wipe your forehead again, using the arm that Iwamine grazed. You can feel the fresh blood smearing on your skin, and your arm is a mess of red when you pull it away. “Strenuous work.”

The look Iwamine gives you… ah, well. There’s a reassuring piece of familiarity. Playing this game is an inexact art, and this is a board you’re unfamiliar with, but you know the rules. Shuu Iwamine is on your ground, now. He barely seems to know what to do with himself. It’s quite nearly endearing. You hold his gaze, calm and waiting while he sorts out his own crisis, then twitch an eyebrow up questioningly.

He jerks away from the staring competition. The light in your plastic box is strange, but it can’t hide the splotchy blush that blooms over his cheeks. “Separate the arms at the elbows and wrists. Perhaps that will be within your capabilities.”

You consider the arm in front of you. Before you can come up with the next stage of your plan - and you’re still not entirely certain where the plan is going, which would help greatly - Iwamine makes a displeased noise. “It is a simple procedure, Sakazaki. We continue to be short on time.”

“Some of us don’t have a medical license, _mon ami_ ,” you say, and then look at him, a perfect picture of uncertainty. “Perhaps all of us. Still, I may require your guidance.”

Yes, there’s no mistaking the blush now. You play dumb - all your practice as the empty-headed flirt is paying off in unexpected ways - so as to not startle him away. The very instant Iwamine suspects you are manipulating him, you imagine you’ll be joining Hiyoko. He needs to think that any action is his idea, that he is projecting his desires onto you unprompted. In any other situation, you doubt this play would work, but you’re counting on his inexperience with the ability of someone to indulge him to work as your cover.

It works better than you could have hoped. A lot of your youth was spent training to keep your composure, but you nearly start laughing when Iwamine circles behind you and reaches forward to close his hand over yours, around the knife. “Hold the limb steady,” he says, his voice almost warm. He presses the tip of the knife into the pit of the elbow, leaning his chest into your shoulders to make you put your strength behind the knife. “The dermis,” he says. “Keep pushing until you encounter resistance.”

You do your best to hold a straight face.

“Sever the biceps tendon and cut through the muscle,” he orders. Your knife grates against bone, making you clench your teeth. “Continue the cut around.” When the knife drags, he presses your hand down impatiently. “The annular ligament and… the radial collateral ligament,” he adds, at the second tough patch you have to lean your shoulder into. “Now separate the two halves.” 

You aren’t entirely sure what’s keeping them together still after that cut, but resettle your hand to brace the bicep further and aim for a crevice in the elbow joint regardless. Iwamine adjusts the angle of your blade, minutely, and you must be picking up an instinct for this because it takes half as much cursing as the shoulder joint to separate the bones. You sigh and roll your shoulders, pretending to start at noticing Iwamine’s presence against you. His hand is gone from yours before you can comment, leaving a neat, less-bloodied outline on your glove. He didn’t do a very _good_ job of draining Hiyoko’s blood, you have to say. 

Before you continue, you peel off your gloves. Your fingers are slightly too long for them, and blood has crept in through the wristband, disregarding their entire reason for existing. When you dig into the wrist of the arm in front of you without putting on another pair, using the protruding joint as a guide, Iwamine nearly drops the sample tube he’s been using as an excuse to not make eye contact with you. “ _Sakazaki-_ ”

“Hm?” You pretend to not notice that his voice is nearly a plea and wriggle your fingers. Already, Hiyoko’s blood stains your fingertips a deep, dark red. “Ah, the gloves were uncomfortable. You never did order my size. It’s hardly like I can introduce an infection to her system now, is it?”

Iwamine swallows and turns back to his samples. “Carry on.”

—

You’ve lost track of the hour by the time you finish piecing out both arms. Iwamine has contented himself with packing your results into boxes in between frowning at his samples, only occasionally unbending enough to offer you any advice he feels you need. You took off your blazer long ago, when the sleeves wouldn’t stay rolled up, and your tie for similar reasons, but your shirt has suffered in their stead. You’re covered to the elbows in drying blood, the cuffs of your shirt picking up the red in irregular stains whenever you bend your arms. The front of your shirt is absolutely lathered in blood, to the point where it being white is a distant memory, and it’s even somewhat on purpose. The way the blood has stuck it to your skin is helpful, though, from the sidelong glances you’ve been pretending to not notice from Iwamine. 

“Legs now, I presume,” you say, and stretch. It’s only half designed to make Iwamine look at the lines of your body, since your back truly does ache from bending over the bed and the effort necessary for cutting apart a corpse. One of your joints pops, completely by chance, and you see him _shudder_. Coming out of your stretch, you idly scratch at your collarbone, leaving a streak of blood that trails down below the collar of your shirt - and the extra button you managed to undo when he wasn’t looking. You’re going to have to think of a way to escalate this, cement the need you’re cultivating in him and link it indelibly to you so that he needs _you_ , turn it into something you can call on in future - but, for now, you think you’re doing well enough at maintaining his interest. 

“Begin with the feet,” he says, curt. While you’re pressing thoughtfully at an ankle, attempting to figure out the best angle of attack, he says, “We are making better time than I had anticipated.”

You blink, then paste a stupid, flirty grin on your face before any of the smug satisfaction unfurling in your chest can come through. Seduction is an art form, and you are very good at what you do. “Is that a compliment, Iwamine? I’m flattered.”

“It was an _observation_ ,” Iwamine snaps, voice going flat. You let your flirty grin grow and look up to wink at him, noting with satisfaction that he’s blushing again even as he turns away, pointedly dismissing you. Previously, when you’ve flirted with him, you’ve gotten nothing in response, so this is an encouraging development.

The ankle eludes you. You sigh, since you had wanted to figure it out on your own - seduction may be your game, but dissection is certainly Iwamine’s forte, and you would have liked to be able to present yourself as more of an equal on his terms. “The ankle is giving me some trouble, _mon ami_. A little help from the expert?”

He stands behind you as he did before, despite the positioning of Hiyoko’s ankle allowing for him to stand to the side if he wished. Your hand is caked in blood, wrapped around the hilt of his knife, and you expect him to hesitate. Instead, his hand \- also ungloved, now, since he hasn’t been touching anything alarming whilst you’ve been working - closes on yours as if nothing is out of the ordinary. His hand is warm, skin soft. You let yourself take a deliberate breath with your lips barely parted, your eyes half-closed. “The tibia extends further than you would expect,” he says, drawing a soft line with the knife. The flesh it parts barely bleeds. “You will need to cut the tendons at the front of the foot before continuing your cut-” he guides your knife underneath one of the sharp knobs of Hiyoko’s ankle, “-under the malleoli. Sever the calcaneal tendon, then flex the foot.” Demonstration over, he lets go of your hand, with some effort - partly, you would like to hope, because of your wiles, but mostly because the blood drying on your hands is sticky. Before he can leave, you drop the knife and grab his wrist. He’s managed to avoid the blood so far, which means that you stain a vivid, lonely mark into his lab coat.

“Sakazaki,” he says, not losing his composure. That changes when you raise his palm to your mouth. This is a risk, and it is convenient that you need to keep up appearances, because focussing on his hand with the appropriate lust-driven expression means that you don’t have to look at his face. Hiyoko’s blood is thick and not warm enough, the copper taste overriding any subtler flavours it may have ever possessed. Iwamine freezes in place as you clean his hand, and only the fact that he doesn’t collapse belies the fact that he’s not holding his breath. When you chance a sideways glimpse to try to ascertain how your move is being taken, you’re treated to the first time in your life - perhaps in anyone’s life - Shuu Iwamine has been rattled enough to actually express it.

Finished, you press your cheek into his hand before letting go. Iwamine strokes your cheek absently - and you worry that you’ve somewhat misread the situation - before trailing his hand back to your mouth. His thumb presses down to part your lips and you accede, looking away in a manner more sly than shy, submissive but still challenging - and after a deliberate swipe along your bottom lip, he pushes in a manner that has your tongue responding. You lick his thumb and realise that he was clearing leftover blood from your lips, and he watches you with an intensity you’ve only seen matched by his attention to the experiments he carries out - the ones with the results you’ve never been able to steal, jealously guarded. “Interesting,” he breathes, and blinks, before reclaiming his hand. He doesn’t seem to know what to do with it afterwards, curling and uncurling it by his side. “Regardless, Sakazaki. The foot.”

You, deliberately looking him in the eye, lick your lips clean and watch his reactions. Positive, you think, and turn back to your task. If you’re correct, he won’t be able to _stop_ thinking about your escalation. At this point, the scenario practically writes itself. For as brilliant as he is, Iwamine’s weaknesses are as glaring as anyone else’s.

The feet are simple when you follow the instructions, which allows you to get away with feigned attention at this point. It’s probably best if you allow Iwamine to make the next move, so it doesn’t seem too much as if you’re leading him along. He’s stopped pretending at anything other than paying attention to you, one of his guards dropped as he leans on the bed and watches your hands’ every move. You’ve gotten used to thinking of him as a sort of automaton, really - dull, clockwork precision. In contrast, now, his eyes look alive for the first time you’ve ever noticed.

He’s almost pretty, you catch yourself thinking, then mentally shrug and let it go. It’s a good sign that you’re thinking that; you’re in the appropriate mindset for the mission. The compartmentalisation can be sorted out later.

He helps you with the knee without prompting, drawing a line for your knife to follow, prying apart Hiyoko’s flesh so that you can see the ligaments and cut them. The blood shows up brilliant against his skin, and you sink yourself further into the mindset necessary for this situation. Competence, you think, building the list of what you think Shuu Iwamine is attracted to, and mindgames. Blood. Seeing what makes a person _tick_ , both literal and metaphorical. From his reactions, you imagine he’s never connected it with a sexual desire before, though he doesn’t seem to have any moral compunctions against it. And you - well, you’ve always been happy to assist in the exploration of new frontiers. Doubtlessly, he thinks he’s finding what motivates you with the false masks you’ve lowered - a hunger for approval, little horror for death, a talent for depravity. It’s easy enough to bare your weaknesses when all that lies beneath is a blank slate, and you will dredge up whatever alarming aspects of yourself you need to in order to get out of this with the upper hand.

The less said about the pelvic joints, the better. Iwamine takes a more active hand in the disassembly at that point, easing a scalpel into the rough cuts made by your knife to perform the more delicate work of cutting through layers of muscle. Occasionally he orders you to move leg and loosen one muscle or another, but most of the work is carried out in as much silence as can be expected. He goes through the process on both of the legs before telling you to roll Hiyoko over. You’re absorbed enough by the process that you obey automatically and turn her without any particular reverence. _She’s light without her limbs_ is all you think, and not even in a particularly horrified way; looking up from arranging what remains of her legs, you catch Iwamine giving you a thoughtful look.

That worries you. Assumptions are what get a spy killed in the field, and you have been assuming that you have control over the situation from square one. Usually keeping someone distracted by lust is enough to ensure that they never notice you pulling the strings, but if he’s considering you enough to be giving you thoughtful looks, you may not be on as safe a ground as you’d desire. Worse yet, it would be suspicious now to make any of the moves you made earlier to shift him off-balance. Smearing blood on yourself would just be gauche, if you both know the game you’re playing. An innocent request for help is unthinkable. Touching him again - too much, too soon.

You need time. So you put down your knife, move back until you’re leaning on the one real wall in this partition, and slide down with a sigh, resting your arms on your knees. Tilting your head back, you close your eyes, letting the exhaustion brought on by the strangeness of the day crash down on your shoulders.

“We’re not finished, Sakazaki.” Iwamine sounds annoyed, which you stubbornly take as a positive sign. He wouldn’t sound annoyed unless he missed your help, you assume.

“Ten minutes, _mon ami_ ,” you say, and tiredly scrub at your face, dislodging your glasses. “It’s been longer than it should have been since the last time I slept, and the work is difficult.”

There’s a long silence, wherein you fret internally that Iwamine has dismissed you entirely. You think you’ve probably piqued his interest enough to make him curious by now, but one can never be sure. “Difficult,” he says, eventually, breaking the silence. You relax for real at the confirmation that not everything is as dire as it seems. More thoughtfully, he adds, “Emotionally.”

You open your eyes a sliver to look up at him through your lashes, let a smirk crook up the corner of your mouth. “I’m not a good case study for emotions, _Docteur_. The task itself doesn’t bother me.”

His hand, resting on the corner of the equipment trolley that he’s using as a makeshift desk, closes, thumb rubbing over his knuckles and flaking away dried blood. He doesn’t notice, watching you. “Your half-brother,” he says, an abrupt segue. “The Hawk files are incomplete, despite their association with the Le Bels.” He sounds more annoyed at the incompetence of his party than anything else, which turns your smirk into something approximating an actual smile. You had wondered if Iwamine had done any research into you - he’d stumbled across the truth of Sakuya’s genetics more by chance than any concentrated effort, and you were unsure if he deemed the situation interesting enough to look into it further.

“Curious?” you ask, and laugh when all you get is an annoyed noise in response. It’s nearly enough to drown out the feeling of cotton in your hands, rough contours of a small face. You notice your fingernails digging into your palms and loosen your hands self-consciously. “He died of complications. It’s not so uncommon.”

Iwamine looks at your hands, then at you performing your best evasive, uncaring expression. “Complications.”

“Ah, well,” you sigh, and shrug. “I suppose it wasn’t all that complicated in the end. Le Bel and I always did agree on the importance of family.”

Iwamine considers you, and you don’t think he notices the slight smile he’s wearing. Some of his hair has come loose from its tie, curling along his neck. He looks like he’s in the second-wind of an all-nighter, mussed and tired bordering on euphoric. You can only imagine what you’d see if you looked in a mirror now, the self you’ve become to appeal to him. Cold eyes and careless slaughter with a human veneer papered over the top, most likely. It seems to be working, at least. 

“Your ten minutes are over,” he says. You nod, pick up your knife, and get back to it.

—

Dismantling Hiyoko’s torso into manageable chunks is a much less delicate operation than taking apart her limbs. You need to switch to a cleaver that Iwamine hands over reluctantly. It’s heavier than you expect, and you mentally re-evaluate exactly how delicate he is after taking it from his unwavering hand. At first, you try to use it as a precision tool, carving a rut to set it in and then pushing with the weight of your whole body, but it doesn’t work. 

Besides, raising the cleaver above your head and snapping it down full-force gives Iwamine a rather encouraging expression. When you have to work to pull the blade free, bracing yourself and grunting with the effort, he takes a hasty step closer to the bed - which, you note with satisfaction, is above waist level. It seems the doctor _likes_ the cleaver.

You clean it off - for certain values of ‘clean’ - on the sleeve of your shirt before picking your target and raising the blade again. His knuckles turn white with how tight his grip is around the rails of the bed.

At last, you’re left with only the separation of head from shoulders to perform. What’s left of the body is face-down, hair pulled away from the neck so that the knobs of Hiyoko’s spine are exposed. Iwamine, standing opposite you, presses a thumb into the flesh covering her spine thoughtfully and then drags it up, leaving a pale, dead line in the wake of his hand. With your abandoned knife, he etches a mark into one of the valleys. “Here,” he says, and glances at you before standing back to let you work. “You will likely require several cuts. I would prefer the job done neatly, Sakazaki.”

“You doubt me, _Docteur_?” you ask, lightly, and flip the cleaver in your hand. Knives, certainly, are not something that you possess any great deal of facility with, but you have been practicing for a while now. More importantly, bluffing is something that you’ve always been good at. In one easy motion from the flip, you bring the cleaver up. If this works, you’ll impress Iwamine. If it doesn’t, you’ve little to lose regardless. 

The cleaver buries itself in Hiyoko’s neck with a meaty _thunk_ , blood immediately pooling around the deep cut. You’ve made it through the bone, you’re certain, and the velocity of the blade has carried you most of the way through the assorted anatomy of the neck - and, straining, you manage to get the blade to continue its downward path. You gasp when the head rolls free, not realising that you had been holding your breath, and stumble a step backwards from the force of your cut no longer having anywhere to go.

An arm wraps around your neck, a knife presses to your throat. “Decapitation,” Iwamine says, the point of the blade tracing a thoughtful line across your skin, “may not need as much strength as I led you to believe.”

This is what happens when you focus too much on corpses and not on the people who produce them. “Ah, _mon ami_ ,” you sigh, sorrowful. “I feel taken advantage of.”

Iwamine digs the knife in further. You gasp, and press back against him. He laughs, breathless. “You don’t know how interesting you truly are, Sakazaki. Seducing me via disarticulation?”

“Well,” you say, heart pounding, and lick your lips. Iwamine is slender - scrawny, even \- and weak on his right side, whilst you’ve been training for the field for years. It’s a simple matter to reach up and grab his arm, back him into the wall and _push_. He groans at the contact - pain or pleasure, you’d accept either - and his arm slackens in your grip, only your assistance holding the knife steady against your neck. “It appears to have worked.”

Next thing you know, there is a blazing pain on the side of your neck opposite the knife. At first you think that Iwamine had another knife hidden, but then the panic recedes and you realise he’s sunk his teeth into the point where your neck and shoulder meet. His free hand comes up to yank at your shirt until it exposes more of your shoulder, and he bites again. Something trickles from the first mark, and you think it might be his saliva until you see the red path it forms. If he’s trying to kill you, this is a very unconventional way of going about it.

The knife drops from his hand, its clatter against the floor muffled by the plastic he laid down at the beginning of this disaster. He fists the hand - his left, the stronger - in your hair and yanks your head back like he’s preparing you for the executioner as he licks up the blood he’s managed to draw from you. You gasp, the pain twinging all the way down to your toes, and try to guide his other hand down over your hip. “Doctor,” you pant, rocking needily against him, “ _please_ -”

“Don’t be boring,” he snaps, and twists his hand in your hair. “I have no patience for your _pornography_ , Sakazaki.”

You turn just enough to look at him in honest confusion. You’ve been building this scenario for _hours_ , reshaping yourself to his desires. Not to put too fine a point on it, but you are drenched in blood not your own and presenting an open book of your mind to him. You debased yourself to set this up and _let him discover the setup_. Frankly, you’re amazed he hasn’t come in his pants at the opportunity to win the game you’ve rigged.

Iwamine looks at you and your silent question, and his lip curls. He shoves you away before you can ask why, hands going to the collar of his lab coat and settling it back into place with short, irritated gestures. “I have more important things to do than carry out whatever inane play you’ve decided to take the lead in today.” In at least one sop to your ego, his voice is shaking. Only a little, but, well. It is Iwamine. 

Free of his grip, you’re able to turn to face him properly. He looks immaculate, compared to the horrorshow you’ve made of yourself. There’s no question that he is - was - _is_ attracted to you like this, but what broke it? You put on the persona of-

You _put on the persona_. And Iwamine likes tearing people down to what makes them tick. No wonder he’s insulted.

When he tries to slide out from between you and the wall, you push him back against it, pin him there with your arm across his throat. Then you do the only thing you can do, and let the persona you put on melt away.

You’re not sure who you are below all your masks. You learned to lie young, learned to create another person and step into their skin and tell their truth. You learned the harsh lesson that liars are _safe_ , that liars _win_ , that lies and selfishness will protect everything you’re afraid of losing. You murdered to preserve your selfishness, and after that, well. Being raised to be a spy doesn’t necessarily instill an exceptional ethical framework in someone, although it did teach you to fake it.

This entire situation has been Iwamine dissecting your motives as carefully as you’ve torn through his, you only now realise. He has never bothered with even the pretense of ethics, and has been delighting in tearing down the lies you tell yourself. _Interesting_ , because you compromised yourself and he saw someone with a personality in common, not because of lust.

Well, perhaps a little lust.

“Do you think you’re the first I’ve done this to, Doctor?” you ask, and press your arm against his throat a little harder. If he wants compromised morals, you’ll show him how much you can bend. He gasps, or tries to, and his hips jerk against yours. It seems you’ve captured his interest again. “It’s a specialty of mine. You think I’m _interesting_? Flirtation via corpse doesn’t even rank. You’re _boring_ , Iwamine, and I thought I may as well make this fun.”

He rakes a hand down your exposed chest, leaving stinging furrows in your skin. You laugh and move your arm so that you can crush him against the wall with your body instead, leaning over to plant a light trail of kisses along his neck before continuing in an intimate murmur. “If you want to figure me out, you’ll need to try harder than that.” Thoughtful, you pause, and lean away to bait the hook. “Of course, if you’d rather not…”

Iwamine catches his breath in heavy pants, glaring at you, a blush you suspect is more anger than anything else by now working its way down his neck. “Figure you out?” His eyes sweep you head to toe - or head to hips, at the very least. “I could take you apart piece by piece. It’s been more entertaining to watch you do it to yourself.” You’re about to step away, chalk the whole thing up to a failed experiment and perhaps pick up a knife in case he decides to escalate in an unpleasant direction, but then he winds a hand back into your hair and hooks a leg over your hip, closing the last of the distance between you. “Fucking the Hawk Party murderer,” he taunts, going breathless when you grab his ass and grind. “You really do - _ah_ \- have a script in your head, don’t you? Cli- _uhn_ \- _clich_ _é_ _._ ”

You yank open his belt one-handed without replying, since your mouth is buried in his neck at his direction. With his leg over your hip, you can’t get his pants down very far, but you don’t need to. To your surprise, he lets go of your hair to take care of removing your pants, or at least the obstacle they create. You suppose you did challenge him, and his experimentation has always been thorough.

You’ve never been capable of not one-upping a competitor. There’s still enough blood in your shirt that, when you wrap it around your hand and squeeze, it coats your fingers and makes them slick instead of sticky. When you use your bloody hand to squeeze Iwamine’s cock against your own and thrust, he groans, eyes closing and head lolling back against the wall. “Sometimes the clichés work, _mon ami,_ ” you pant. With your unoccupied hand, you pin his against the wall and lean for a better angle. “I think you’re just upset because you only know part of the script.”

“ _Mmh_ , Sakazaki,” Iwamine gets out, arching to try to control the steady motion of your hips. You think that you’ve broken him down, at first, but then he opens his eyes to look down at you - figuratively, if not literally, eyes half-lidded and still too detached for your liking. “Extrapolation. You - _ah_ \- the only _selfless_ thing you’ve ever done is - is smother an infant to-” He whines when you resume laying gentle, teasing kisses along the line of his collar, tilting his head to give you better access. “To keep your brother alive. The logic is simple.” His wrists flex against your hands, whole body desperate for the vicious sensation you’re denying him with the easy pace of your frotting and rhythm of your hand, the _sweet_ way you nuzzle at his neck. Precome mingles with the blood on your hand and makes wet noises with every motion the two of you make against each other. “If you’re deviating-” you laugh at his word choice and his voice hitches at the feeling of your mouth on his skin, “-from expected behaviour, look to the last reason.” His words are coming out in a chant, and curiously you pick up your pace to see if it has any effect on his lecture. It does. “You want to protect your brother - _yes_ \- and you’ll-” He writhes against you, desperate. Given that he’s quickly turning into a sobbing, debauched mess from the lightest of your touches, you’re certain that any experience Iwamine had was long enough ago to no longer count. That, if nothing else, is something you can use. “You’ll fuck me to do it because it’s all you know - Sakazaki, _please_!”

“You’ve figured me out so well,” you say, letting mock surprise colour your voice. He hears it, as you intended, is insulted by how unaffected by the situation you are compared to him if the way he closes his eyes and turns his head away is any indication. “You may as well put the last piece in place, _Docteur_.” The French, a hint of the flirting mask, makes him shudder. “We’ll be here until you do.” Slowing your pace, you thrust harder, and he gasps.

Iwamine groans. “I won’t - _ah_ , let me _finish_ , you- you- I won’t _harm_ him. Not a hair on his - _mmh_ \- innocent, empty head, is that what you want to hea- _Sakazaki_!” He nearly folds in half when you squeeze the two of you harder together and quicken your pace again. His hair falls into his face and he bites desperately into the hair still in its tie, using it to muffle the desperate noises he makes. It doesn’t work particularly well, the increasing volume of his cries giving you more than enough warning for his orgasm. You let go of his wrists and step back when he’s done, and he just slides down the wall in a daze, pale and still twitching. Out of a sense of chivalry, you take off your shirt - ruined, anyway - and toss it over his lap before discreetly tucking yourself back into your pants. Not getting to finish is annoying, but somehow you doubt Iwamine will feel much like playing doctor with you beyond this point.

It’s a long five minutes of Iwamine basking in the afterglow before he says anything. Finally, hoarse, he says, “Pack the remaining torso pieces and head. Deliver the boxes to the teachers’ breakroom. Your assistance will no longer be required afterwards.”

You do as he requests, loading the boxes onto a sturdy trolley outside the hermetic seal of the plastic room that Iwamine rouses himself to deconstruct while you organise everything. This, you think, is something you will be glad to have erased from existence. From Iwamine’s ominous behaviour and the fact that you have a pieced-up corpse to deliver to a well-trafficked area in the school, you doubt any peace will last for long, but there’s something soothing about the mess being peeled away from the world.

After leaving the boxes in the teacher’s lounge, you break into the school’s shop to steal a new uniform and then make your way to the gym for its showers. Absently, you plan your next steps while waiting for the water to heat up - clean yourself off, go to Leone’s room and nap until he shows up so that you aren’t a gibbering mess when everything starts happening, brief Leone and see if the Dove Party knows anything it’s not telling you about Hiyoko Tosaka. It’s only when the water goes cold that you start paying attention to what you’re doing again.

You reach up and touch your face, feel liquid roll down your cheeks despite the angle of the shower’s spray making that impossible. Slowly, you tilt your head back until anything incriminating disappears in the rest of the water coursing over your face, and force a smile. You got what you wanted, and now it’s time to put the masks back on. You’re certain you won’t survive what’s in store without them.

—

Later, in Sakuya’s arms, neurotoxin rapidly eroding any control you had over your body in a particularly cruel echo of the way you manipulated Iwamine’s loss of control, you realise that you should have perhaps extracted a more nuanced promise from the doctor about exactly how Sakuya was to be protected from harm. With the last of what you have, you put on a mask to wish your brother goodbye.

You think Iwamine would appreciate the irony.


End file.
